“I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another, or my praise to idols. See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.” (Isaiah 42:8-9)
We can’t embrace the new, without letting go of the old. Will we?
Lord Jesus, give us the courage and the strength and the grace to let go of the old, so that we might be able to embrace the new.
Until my sense of well-being depends on God alone, I will always be at the mercy of mood, whim, and circumstance. He alone is my rock and fortress. He alone will allow my soul to find rest and peace. He alone is my hope. If my hope is in anyone or anything else, I am in for a rocky ride.
What is your sense of well-being dependent upon these days? What would it look like to put your trust in God alone?
“Trust in him, O people, pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” (Psalm 62:8)
“How can I be sure of this?” (Luke 1:18)
It’s a simple enough question, I suppose. And not terribly out of line, at least on the surface, given the circumstances. Except when you consider that the being standing before Zechariah was actually and angel, who had just told him that “your prayer has been heard.” It certainly echoes the sentiments of a man who would come before Jesus years later: “Lord, I believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)
What caused Zechariah to doubt? Was it that the miracle seemed too hard to perform, given his age, or that he didn’t really believe God loved him enough to perform it? In other words, did Zechariah have a hard time believing that God could answer his prayer, or that God would answer his prayer?
Julian of Norwich once wrote: “For some of us believe that God is all power and able to do all, and that he is all wisdom and knows how to do all. But that he is all love and will do all, there we stop. This ignorance is that which most hinders God’s lovers.”
So, what is it for you? What makes it hard to believe that God wants to answer your prayers? What makes it hard for you to believe that he wants to turn your mess into a miracle? Do you believe he can? Do you believe he will? Just pay careful attention, because sometimes the miracle he is performing is not the exact one we are asking him for. Sometimes he is doing a bigger, deeper work.
Forgive us, O Lord, when we
doubt the goodness of your heart and the power of your love. Give us confidence that you do, indeed, hear
our prayers and are committed to giving us the deepest desires of our hearts—yourself.
“And she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn.” (Luke 2:7)
Talk about humble beginnings! The Creator of the universe, God in the
flesh, came into the world as a newborn baby, was wrapped in cloths, and was
laid in a manger. All because there was
no room for him in the inn! Are you
kidding me? How much lower can you
get? And yet, this is how God chose to enter
his creation.
It certainly tells us something about the
character of our God. And it certainly
sets an example for those of us who follow.
The very birth of Jesus invites us to the low places. It invites us to enter the world with a hush
rather than a flash. It invites us to make
our home among the low rather than the high.
The temptation to try and make a place for ourselves in this world is so strong, and yet Jesus did the very opposite. And he invites us to join him. Which means that whenever we find that there is no room for us, we are most likely following in his footsteps. Rejoice and be glad!
Lord Jesus, the way you chose to enter this world tells us so much about who you are, and about who you aren’t. Help us to have the courage and the strength and the grace to see your example and to follow it.
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." (Genesis 32:26)
You’ve got to admire Jacob’s tenacity. While most of us would probably have been saying, “Let me go, this is exhausting, painful, and incredibly uncomfortable,” Jacob was saying, “I will not let you go until you bless me." The truth is that most of us probably do not stay in the struggle long enough to get the blessing. We tap out. But Jacob was determined. He knew this wrestling would eventually bring a blessing, so he stayed in it. And although he left with a limp, he also left with a new name. From that moment on, Jacob’s life would be forever changed.
“Enable me to stay in the struggle until the blessing arrives. I will allow myself to be vulnerable. That very vulnerability is my limp, but it is also my blessing. O Transforming One, you have wounded me, yet you have not disappointed me. I am grateful for the blessing of all my new names. Thank you for your presence in the beautiful struggle of daily life.” (Abide by Macrina Wiederkehr)
But you know what I've found at the bottom of these depths of woe? I've found Jesus. I guess that’s why the words of the ancient prayer (Psalm 139:8) remind us that even if we "make our bed in the depths," he is still there. God was right there with me in my descent into my inner darkness. His goodness, his unfailing love, and his full redemption (Psalm 130:7-8) even reached to the bottom of the depths of my woe, and beyond. In fact, it is impossible to know the true depths of the unfailing love of God apart from a journey into the depths of woe. For these depths are meant not only to mark us deeply, but also to change us completely. Jesus meets us there and makes us more into the people, and the lovers, he dreamt us to be.
So if you are currently in the depths, like me, don’t fight it but embrace it. God is bigger than your sorrow and your sadness and your pain. God is even bigger than your sin. Trust him; he is doing a great work in you. He wants to show you the depths of your sin, so that he can help you to better understand the enormity and extravagance of his unfailing love, as well as the beauty and power of his full redemption.
“From the depths of woe I raise to Thee the voice of lamentation. Lord, turn a gracious ear to me and hear my supplication. If Thou iniquities dost mark, our secret sins and misdeeds dark, O who shall stand before Thee?
To wash away the crimson stain, grace, grace alone, availeth. Our works, alas! are all in vain; in much the best life faileth. No man can glory in thy sight, all must alike confess thy might, and live alone by mercy.” ~Martin Luther
Advent is coming up. It starts on Sunday, December 3. If you are looking for a helpful companion/devotion for yourself, your staff, your small group, your volunteers, or your church, here are two options.
Order My Steps: A Daily Journey Through Advent and Christmas
Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though you footprints were not seen.” (Psalm 77:19)
A very wise man once said that there are actually two exodus stories in the book of Exodus. The first is God getting Israel out of slavery and the second is God getting slavery out of Israel. The first happened one day, as God led his people out of Egypt and through the Red Sea. The second took forty years of wandering in the wilderness. It seems that the comfortable and familiar, no matter how hard and dysfunctional, don’t loosen their grip on us easily. The problem is that following Jesus almost never involves what is easy, comfortable, or familiar.
I’m coming to realize more and more that God’s way always leads through the sea—and then through the wilderness—not around it. It is only by going through the sea, and then the wilderness, that God gets slavery out of us. It is a long and arduous journey. The life of slavery runs deep. Its roots have dug way down into us and it will take some time and effort to pull them out.
“Freedom cannot abide in a
heart dominated by desire, in a slave’s heart,” wrote John of the Cross. “It abides in a liberated heart, in a child’s
heart.” Going through, not
around, is how God brings that liberation about. “There is no way out, only through,” wrote
Gerald May. And he was so right. There
is something about going through, instead of around, that is transforming.
But the bottom line is that until
we love our liberation more than we love our captivity, we will always be
slaves.
My heart is not lifted up, O Lord, my eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with great matters, or thing too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore. (Psalm 131:1-3)
Be still. Be quiet. Drop your list. Abandon your agenda. Stop your anxious spinning. Listen to God. Let him guide you. Wean yourself off of the need to be
everything to everyone. Still and quiet
your soul and just see what happens.
This is the first lesson in the school of prayer.
Functional atheism. What an interesting phrase. It is the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with me. Thus, it is not so much atheism in theological terms, but atheism in practical, functional terms. Which makes it very subtle and hard to spot. In fact, most functional atheists would probably not consider themselves atheists at all, they just live like they are. The telltale signs of functional atheism are self-sufficiency, productivity, and performance—three things that are highly valued by the culture around us. But three things that can also leave us spiritually dead and impoverished.
Just look at the letter
Jesus wrote to the church at Laodicea, for example. (Rev. 3:14-22) These were
folks who professed that they both knew Jesus and sought to follow him, and yet
the way they lived their lives said something much different. In fact, Jesus described their love for him
as tepid and lukewarm, which made him want to vomit. There was no passion or zeal for God, only a falsely
satisfied sense of self-sufficiency: “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do
not need a thing.” So much so that they
had left him out of their daily lives.
Jesus was on the outside looking in; knocking continually on the door of
their hearts, longing for deep, vibrant, intimate relationship with them, and
yet they left him outside. Thus, the “believers”
at the church of Laodicea were functional atheists. They said they loved God, but they lived like
he didn’t exist.
The admonition Jesus gave them
was to stop relying on themselves and their own resources to manage life, to
realize their poverty and their helplessness, and to turn to him to give them
what they could not possibly provide for themselves: to be rich in spiritual treasure,
to be clothed in his holiness and righteousness, and to be healed and made
whole. Only Jesus could give them those
things, if only they would be willing to open the door. The very life of their souls depended on it.
”One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him is his temple.” (Psalm 27:4)
“The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have aid is quite true.” (John 4:18)
Contrary to popular opinion,
Jesus is not trying to shame, but to awaken.
Awakening, however, is not a tidy process. In fact, it can be pretty messy. For in order to truly awaken someone, they
must first be made aware of how they have been lulled to sleep. Their needy patterns and strategies must be exposed, recognized,
and acknowledged before true awakening can take place.
But who in their right mind wants to be
exposed? Only someone who realizes deep
inside that their lives have taken a terribly wrong turn. Only someone who yearns and longs and hopes
for a life that’s better than the one they are living. Only someone who is longing to experience a
love that is deeper and wider and longer and higher than any love they have yet
to experience.
That’s where we have to
trust the heart of Jesus, that his intent is love and never shame. That he alone can love us with the depth and
the passion and the intimacy we most deeply long for. That when he exposes us it is with the utmost
gentleness and kindness and compassion, for it is his invitation to name what
is wrong within us and return to what is good and true.
The heart of Jesus is to
expose and awaken, to name and invite.
Because, ultimately, he doesn’t want us to settle for less than the life
and the love he created us for. He doesn’t
want us to live at the mercy of others.
He doesn’t want us to be dependent on the attention and affection of
those around us, when it is only he who can give us the attention and affection
we most deeply need. Helping us to
realize that, and helping us to stop being the attention and affection whores
that we are, is what spiritual awakening is really all about. It certainly was for the woman at the well.
"The cause why we are so troubled with these sins is because of our ignorance of love. To this knowledge we are most blind, for some of us believe that God is all power and able to do all and that He is all wisdom and knows how to do all. But that He is all love and will do all, there we stop. This ignorance is that which most hinders God's lovers. There persists a fear that hinders us because of paying attention to ourselves and the sins we have done in the past. We do not know how to despise the sin of self-hatred, as we do other sins which we recognize." ~Julian of Norwich
“The cause why we are so troubled with these sins is because of our ignorance of love. To this knowledge we are most blind, for some of us believe that God is all powerful and able to do all, and that He is all wisdom and knows how to do all. But that He is all love and will do all, there we stop. This ignorance is that which most hinders God’s lovers. There persists a fear that hinders us because of paying attention to ourselves and the sins we have done in the past. We do not know how to despise the sin of self-hatred, as we do other sins which we recognize.” ~Julian of Norwich
“This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory. . ..” (John 2:11)
It should come as no surprise to us that the first miracle of Jesus was performed at the wedding of a friend and very few people even knew about it. I mean, who does that? Jesus, that’s who.
What are we to do with a God who reveals his glory in hiddenness and anonymity, except to seek to become more like him?
Jesus always sees beyond the presenting problem to the core. He doesn’t just want to touch the surface, but the deeper places. Touching those deep places within us is the only way we can experience real healing and wholeness.
Thus, Jesus knew that the
problem with the paralytic (Mark 2:1-12) wasn’t merely his legs, it was so much more than
that. The real problem was his heart, so
healing just his legs would stop far short of the healing that was most
desperately needed. If Jesus healed the paralyzed man's legs, without healing his heart, the man would still not be whole.
Maybe you have prayed for years for God’s intervention in some area of your life, and yet, for the most part, those prayers have seemingly gone unanswered. That area of your life remains unchanged. Here’s a thought: maybe it’s because you are praying for the wrong thing. Maybe you too, are praying for your legs, when there is a much deeper issue that must be addressed. God wants to get his hands on that place. He wants to heal you at your deepest levels, but in order to do that he needs you to recognize exactly what the problem is. Are you willing to go there with him?
Heal us, O God, in a deep and beautiful way. For it is healing that we need and only you can offer it. Heal our hearts, heal our lives, and heal our world. Our wounds are the source of most of our conflicts and issues and dysfunctions, so touch us with your healing hands of love and make us alive and whole and free. Amen.
“As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting their net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.”
They were fishermen, but they will be fishers of men. God was calling them to leave behind what they were, in order to become who they really are. It was a pretty abrupt departure from the life they had known and grown comfortable with. Now they were being asked to move from proficiency to mystery. They would have to leave behind a life and an identity they had grown accustomed to and familiar with, in order to step out into the great unknown.
But isn’t that always what
life with Jesus is like? Leaving behind
the comfortable and familiar, in order to embrace a life of risky dependence. Trading autonomy for obedience and control
for surrender. Saying goodbye to comfort
and proficiency, since they cause us to stop short of the life God is beckoning
toward, and saying an unreserved yes to Jesus, regardless of what that
might mean.
We might be tempted to try
to convince ourselves that this calling was only for them, but it’s not. It is for us as well. These brave souls were willing to leave everything
behind—their boats, their nets, and even their own father—in order to follow the
call of Jesus. Are we?
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.” (Mt. 5:8)
Of all the beatitudes, this one seems the
most inaccessible. I mean, I know my own
heart and how impure it really is. Thus,
purity of heart is only possible if God provides it; we can’t do it
ourselves. We are totally dependent on
him.
A careful study of the word,
however, might give us a hint as to how this takes place. It’s what the saints called purgation. The word pure, in the Greek, is katharos,
which is an adjective meaning clean.
It is the word also used in John 15:3 to describe the results of pruning
(kathairō), the verb associated with katharos. Kathairō literally means to purge. It is the process by which we are emptied, in
order to be filled. Thus, if we ever
want to be filled with God’s purity, we must first allow the Spirit of God to
purge us of our impurities. In the words
of a wise saint, “How can God possibly fill you if you are already full of
yourself? It’s like trying to pour into
an already full cup. You must first
empty the cup.”
So, instead of just trying
to add purity to our hearts and lives, which is impossible for us to achieve on
our own anyway, we should probably start (through the power of the Spirit) by emptying
ourselves of all that is not God. Then,
and only then, can he fill us with himself, and his purity. Then we will, indeed, be blessed.
In the words of Susan Annette Muto, “When we live the Beatitudes in and
with the Lord, we become liberated persons in the fullest sense. We follow the path of purgation until, with
Jesus, we are filled with the peace of surrender to the Father and led by his
Spirit to new depths of intimacy with the Indwelling Trinity.”
Prayer
Closing Prayer: Purge me, Lord Jesus, of all that is not you, so that you can fill me with your life, your love, and your purity.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Mt. 5:7)
So, if the merciful are blessed, how in the world do we become merciful? It seems to me that it’s impossible to be merciful without first realizing how desperately we need mercy ourselves. If we don’t think we need mercy, we probably aren’t going to be able to extend mercy. But if we realize the depths of our own need, and are extended mercy ourselves, it makes it much more likely we will respond in kind. I mean, how could one who has been granted mercy, withhold that mercy from others, right? Receiving mercy changes us into merciful people. So the way to become merciful is to bask in the mercy of God.
But we can only do that, it seems, by coming face to face with our own neediness and desperation. As much as we would like for it not to, desperation plays a definite role in the equation. Desperation leads to dependence, dependence leads to humility, and humility, in turn, leads to mercy. Thus, increasing our desperation, increases our capacity to be merciful. Once we have received mercy ourselves, it does something deep inside—it makes us merciful people. And blessed.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Mt. 5:6)
What does it mean to hunger
and thirst for righteousness? The word
for righteousness, in the Greek, is dikaiosynē. It means the state of him who is as he
ought to be. Thus, to hunger and
thirst for righteousness means to yearn for and long for and work for all
things, people, and relationships to be as God intended them to be.
Those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness are agents of life and hope and change in this world. They are the ones who are called and
empowered to bring the hope and the healing and the wholeness of God into this
dark and broken world. They are the ones
who are constantly working to help roll back the effects of the fall, by giving
people a taste of the kingdom of God in the here and now. They are ones who are called to live and to love
as God intended.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. (Mt. 5:5:5)
Meek is
not a word that’s used much these days.
And if it is, it is almost never used in a positive way. Culturally speaking, being meek is seen as
being a pushover, being weak, being spineless.
Which, in all honesty, is the exact opposite of what meekness is really
all about.
Meekness is about being humbly
submissive, which is probably part of the problem. Nobody wants to be submissive to anyone these
days, particularly to God. As a wise
saint once said: “Meekness toward God is a disposition of spirit in which we
accept his dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting.” Thus, being submissive takes strength and
courage and patience and wisdom and fortitude.
You have to have tons of backbone to be submissive; it is not easy.
Jesus knew that. That’s why he said that the meek are blessed,
because the meek are wise enough and strong enough and courageous enough to
submit their plans and their agendas and their wills to the will of God—the one
who made them. The meek recognize the
created order and the magnificence of the One who created them. Their lives are about glorifying God, not about
glorifying, or gratifying, themselves.
When we submit to God, we
submit to the Spirit, instead of trying to be the Spirit. We stop managing and controlling and hijacking
and manufacturing and steering and directing, and we start listening and
waiting and watching and praying and paying attention. We stop trying to constantly grab the wheel
and simply trust God instead. We let God
lead. For the price of submitting is
indeed high, but the price of non-submitting is higher still—our soul.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 5:3)
The eyes of Jesus see what
we cannot. They see beneath the surface
of things, to the very depths. They see
past the temporal, to the eternal. They
see the value in things and situations that we do not typically see as
desirable. That’s because Jesus is more
concerned with our character than he is with our circumstances.
That’s why he can say that the poor in spirit
are “blessed.” In fact, theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. The poor in spirit
are the last, the lowest, and the least.
They are the small, the hidden, and the quiet. The poor in spirit are
the ones who are most open to God, because they need him so desperately. It is the lowly and the meek and the humble
and the needy and the inadequate whose hearts are most receptive to God, not
the proud and the arrogant and the powerful and the self-sufficient. It is in weakness that God’s strength comes
shining through. Poverty of spirit is
the very best soil in which to grow the most beautiful things of God.
At times we are tempted to
ask, “Where is God in the midst of loneliness and brokenness and
marginalization? Where is God in
struggle and turmoil and weakness? Where
is God in disruption and disorientation and disturbance?” But I think the better question is: “Where is
God in success and attention and popularity?
Where is God in pride and adequacy and competence? Which environment grows the better fruit of
the Spirit within us? Which makes us
more loving and grateful and compassionate?
Which makes us more open and excited and receptive to receiving the
kingdom of heaven?"
So, contrary to popular
opinion, maybe the poor in spirit really are blessed after all.
“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” (Hebrews 5:7)
Reverent submission involves
seeing God for who he truly is and seeing ourselves for who we truly are. It involves a deep recognition of his great power
and our inherent powerlessness, of his immeasurable strength and immeasurable our
weakness, of his supreme adequacy and our feeble inadequacy. It is, in fact, an acknowledgement of our desperate
dependence on him.
Reverent submission brings
about a willingness to surrender our plans and our will and our way, in
deference to his. It makes us open to
whatever God is doing, rather than us trying to determine what God is doing: no
manufacturing, no steering, no managing, no hijacking, no controlling.
Reverent submission is about
obedience instead of autonomy. It calls
us to wait and to listen and to pray. It
asks us to watch and to wait and to pay attention. It asks us to respond to God’s initiative,
rather than always taking our own.
Help us, Lord Jesus, to be
more and more like you. Help us to
always act in reverent submission, rather than in prideful arrogance.
O Lord, how I long to be different. How I long to turn from my twisted and dysfunctional patterns and habits, in order to be more whole and holy. I long to be set free from my own self-consumed ways of being and seeing, and to become more and more like you. I long to be more loving instead of self-centered, I long to be more compassionate rather than competitive, and I long to care more about your will and your work than I do about my own.
Continue, O God, to transform my heart. Grow your grace in me and let it flow freely and effortlessly from my heart and life. Change me from deep within. Give me more peace and less frustration. Make me more rooted and less reactive. Help me to be more caring and less annoyed.
O Jesus, fill me so full of your love that there will be no room in me for anything else.
